Don McLaughlin - Love First: Ending Hate Before Its Too Late

I APOLOGIZE . I was wrong. I need a do-over.

Ive been a pastor for thirty-five years. I have gone to school a lot. I talk too much. I love God. I love people. I love being a son, sibling, father, grandfather, neighbor, and friend. I love my church and my city. Im an unapologetic follower of Jesus Christ, and I believe he is right about everything.

But I am not right about everything, and I really blew it on this one, so I need to just get it out in the open so that I can humbly repent. Gods love is not unconditional.

Yes. You read that correctly. It is not a misprint or misspelling. The love of God is conditional. The kind of love Christians are supposed to give is conditional. The love God intends for grandparents, parents, spouses, and your BFF is conditional. The church is called to an extreme, conditional love.

I know, I know. This cant be so! Everyone knows Gods love is unconditional, and most of us have beautiful stories of love in our lives that have been filed under Unconditional Love. I preached it, and I encouraged everyone I met to believe it.But I was wrong. There may be such a thing as unconditional love, but it is not the love of God, and it is not the love the world needs.

Now, either youre at least moderately interested in the direction this is headed, or youre ready to toss this book in the trash. Please hang with me long enough for me to make my case. Im trying to repent here... so think of reading this book as a way to help me make things right.

I now believe unconditional love is our problem, but obviously I didnt always think this way. If your experience and mine overlap at all, my guess is that the unconditional love of God has been imprinted on your soul like a tattoo. Unhooking from this treasured, hallowed thought is not going to be easy. The idea of Gods unconditional love (as I understood it) has given me the hope and strength I needed to face my greatest fears, failures, and frustrations. I dont know how I would have made it this far without the unconditional love of God. (Can you relate?)

But guess what: We did make it this far without the unconditional love of God, because there is no such thing!

If what Ive shared so far seems as disorienting to you as it first did to me, consider Joan and Amy. They sat across from me in my office with bloodshot eyes and streaked makeup. Joan was there because her marriage had exploded. Amy was there because she cared. An email from Joan had given me the basics:

Married twenty years to her high school sweetheart.

Devastated by revelations of his now-public affair.

Packed his stuff and moved in with his girlfriend.

No remorse.

Her friend had helped her set up a session with a counselor, but she wanted to stop by for prayer with her pastor on the way to that appointment.

Do you want to pray with me, or would you like me to pray for you? I asked.

Her reply still stings, You will have to pray for me... I just feel dead.

Joan is one of the countless living dead Ive encountered in decades of pastoral ministry, people with a zest for life who have been reduced to emotional zombies when love has been replaced with betrayal, abandonment, or abuse. And hurts like this are not limited to women, or only to marriage. One of my mentors, who spent a lifetime healing from an abusive father, shared with me, Life without love is known by another name: death. Anyone who has loved hard and been betrayed knows this death. But as much as we want to give up on love, we really dont. Bad love can cut so deep we want to die. But no matter how much it hurts, we cannot extinguish the longing for good love.

I have been entranced with the love of God since he first captured my heart. I believed from the start that Gods love could and would heal our broken relationships and transform our world. But that world seems to have changedto something so much worse. Who would have thought even twenty years ago that ruthless beheadings by terrorists would be posted online so that a nine-year-old could click on it? Its unimaginable that murderous attacks at malls, coffee shops, elementary schools, and family-filled city squares would be the norm. Slavery is still grinding up the lives of children, and profit from sex trafficking is second only to the illegal drug trade worldwide. Why is the human race so inhuman?

I am guessing that both you and I long for real solutions to these and countless more senseless tragedies. I am still convinced that Gods love is the answer. This conviction drives me to seek ways to expand the tangible impact of Gods love into every arena of my life.